| Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy |
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Name |
Arthur Fine |
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Notable ideas |
Natural Ontological Attitude |
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Influences |
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Arthur Fine (born 1937) is an American philosopher of science teaching at the University of Washington (UW). Before moving to UW he taught for many years at Northwestern University and, before that, at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy of Science Association and was for many years one of the editors of the journal Philosophy of Science, one of the leading publications in the field. He proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude (NOA) as a resolution to the debates over scientific realism. Fine also developed one of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics yet to be decided between.
Natural Ontological Attitude
In 2001, Fine gave the following re-counting of the birth of NOA and its important relationship to van Fraassen's anti-realism:
The Scientific Image arrived in 1980 like a breath of fresh air. Although in the introduction van Fraassen counts me among the realist foot soldiers, at just that time Micky Forbes and I were engaged in rethinking the whole realism/antirealism issue. The result was NOA. Van Fraassen’s powerful and enlightening monograph encouraged us in that project. If Mickey and I are parents of NOA, then Bas is perhaps a godfather. Paul Teller too, since he was among the people then who helped us refine our ideas as they developed.
